One of the brightest stars in the uptown soul firmament, Tommy Hunt, has just been celebrated by Ace’s Kent Records on a new collection filled with rare and previously unheard material. The Complete Man: 60s NYC Soul Songs follows up the label’s The Biggest Man with a second dip into his recordings for New York indie Scepter Records as well as Capitol, Atlantic, and Dynamo. Born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tommy Hunt’s family settled in Chicago during his formative years. But difficulties plagued him. He served in the U.S. Air Force…
Release Round-Up: Week of March 1
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, The Best of Everything (Geffen/UMe) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) On the heels of the release of the acclaimed rarities box set An American Treasure, a new career-spanning anthology arrives from the late Tom Petty. The Best of Everything is subtitled The Definitive Career-Spanning Hits Collection 1976-2016 and features 38 tracks from the soulful rock-and-roller, including two previously unreleased cuts (an alternate of “The Best of Everything” and the outtake “For Real.”) Petty’s solo work is heard alongside…
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Ooh Baby: Ace Collects Third Volume of Rare “Manhattan Soul”
Over the first two volumes of Manhattan Soul, Ace Records’ Kent imprint has dug up some of the finest – and indeed, rarest – soul tracks to come out of the Big Apple in the 1960s. For the third installment of the series, the label has again tapped the vaults of Florence Greenberg’s Scepter and Wand Records, plus rival label Musicor, for a definitive chronicle of some of the most urbane R&B of the decade. Though these outfits were based in New York, productions sometimes came from other soul meccas; Manhattan Soul…
Sundazed’s Black Friday Line-Up Boasts Scepter Soul, Spacey Jazz From Sun Ra, and an “Adult” Classic
Sundazed Music has announced a trio of limited edition releases for Black Friday’s Record Store Day event, and they’re sure to be a crate-digger’s delight. Scepter Records may today be best remembered as the home of Dionne Warwick’s classic recordings, but the New York label founded by pioneering executive Florence Greenberg also gave a home to The Shirelles, B.J. Thomas, Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, and numerous other stars of soul and pop. In addition, Greenberg nurtured a stable of some of the finest songwriters and producers in modern popular music, including Burt…
New “Casino Classics” Box Features Northern Soul From Jackie Trent, Tommy Hunt, Gloria Jones, Len Barry
When American soul great Tommy Hunt first approached the Wigan Casino in Wigan, England to celebrate the nightclub’s second anniversary on September 27, 1975, his first reaction was decidedly mixed. He recalled in 2013, “When I got to Wigan, I refused to go in! It scared me because it looked so rough! I’d been playing these fabulous clubs. When I looked at the outside, I said to the driver, ‘you must be at the wrong place.’ He said, ‘Tommy, wait ’til you get inside.’ When I walked in there, I couldn’t believe…
Get Ready: Tommy Hunt’s “Sign of the Times” Revives Northern Soul Favorites
Trivia: who was the first artist to release Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” in 1962? Hint: it wasn’t Dusty Springfield (1964) or Dionne Warwick (1966). The answer is Tommy Hunt, onetime member of The Flamingos and a member of the Scepter Records family between 1961 and 1964. At Scepter, Hunt introduced both that now-classic song and scored hits like “Human” (No. 5 R&B/No. 46 Pop, 1961) and “I Am a Witness” (No. 71 R&B, 1963). Hunt followed his Scepter tenure with stints at Atlantic,…
I Feel Good (All Over): Dance All Weekend Long with Kent’s “Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender”
Though we’ve come to expect delightful and deeply soulful compilations from Ace’s Kent label, one of Kent’s latest is a particular trip: a trip, in fact, to the Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender. The 6Ts Rhythm and Soul Society has been throwing these bashes on a yearly basis since 1993, offering up plenty of dancing and some of the best names in soul music, among them Doris Troy, Barbara Lewis, Tommy Hunt, Bettye LaVette and Maxine Brown. Kent’s The Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender, 1993-2012: 20 Soulful Celebrations offers a variety of songs from…
